IAB Ad Ops: January 2014 Archives

On Tuesday,
January 28th, the Wall Street Journal posted an article focused on the release
of an IAB paper “Privacy and Tracking in a Post-Cookie
World.” The story on WSJ.com originally contained three errors
related to fundamental aspects of the IAB’s membership, technical ramifications
of described technology and the nature of the document discussing current technological
alternatives to the cookie. We appreciate the Journal’s willingness to make those
fixes resulting in a decidedly more accurate representation of the IAB and the
digital advertising industry. However, I would still like to address a few
instances of language selection that could be easily misinterpreted by an
average reader.

First, I would like to explain what a cookie is and how it works, since the description in the Wall Street Journal wasn’t on the mark.

Second,
within the article, there is an implication that client-generated state management
(device IDs) could consolidate online tracking in the hands of specific vendors.

In fact those
vendors would only control the underlying mechanism that creates the IDs and
not the nature of the way those IDs are used by the industry. This is
equivalent to saying that the phone company has control over your supermarket
loyalty program data because in that case the ID is your phone number. In fact,
within this particular solution class, we have seen two very privacy-centric
implementations by Apple and Google in their respective mobile operating
systems.

The third
potential misinterpretation comes from the statement that device IDs solve the
problem of cross device tracking.

Since
client-generated state is created within a specific operating environment (such
as a device operating system or a browser) it does not enable cross-device
tracking. In fact, no current implementations of client-generated state allow automatic industry-wide cross-browser or cross-device tracking. This can and should only ever be
possible at the bequest of the user.

Lastly, the
cloud solution class described in the document is meant to be a connector
between different state management technologies, not a warehouse of personal
data, as asserted in the article.

In fact, the
cloud technology envisioned in the whitepaper could become the technology that
enables a user to synchronize their advertising preferences across devices and
domains.

In fairness
to the journalist, I recognize that this is rather technical for a general
business audience. But, we at the IAB feel it is important to accurately
represent technology and prevent the perpetuation of misunderstanding for the
purpose of easy readability.

About the Author

Steve Sullivan

Steve Sullivan is VP of Advertising Technology at the IAB, and on Twitter at @SteveSullivan32.